Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England

My review has hit a dead end. So anyway, this show is really good and super funny and you might cry-laugh at some of the beautiful moments. Here's my unfinished draft ...
Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England
The essential thread of Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England involves two characters named Early Man 1 and Early Man 2.
An unnamed fancy liberal arts college is closing down its museum. No one goes there anymore. Its history is random and absurd. The show opens with lights-up on the museum’s life-size diorama of Early Man 1 and Early Man 2 in fur and leather costumes that might remind you of Barbarella.
The couple comes to life. It turns out they talk exactly like liberal arts college students from about 2011. They talk about student loans. They analyze their on-again-off-again relationship. They take Xanax. They appear this way, Greek chorus-style, several times, never directly interacting with the other characters.
You might be able to dismiss the pair as light comic commentary (not comic relief because the show has numerous hilarious moments) except for what they do at the very end of the play. They step out of the diorama – they literally step out of the past – and take on the roles of two of the lead characters while those two are frozen, diorama-like, in mid-pose.
Amid all the comedy Mammoths asks big questions about the past. What is the past worth? What do we do with what it has given us?
EDIT: I knew I was missing something. I saw it again tonight because I volunteered at the theater and I misunderstood something about Early Man 1 and Early Man 2. In all of their conversations throughout the show, they are replaying the conversations that they overhead of the museum visitors.
The difference though is in every conversation until the one at the very end, they stay frozen in their museum exhibit poses. In that final scene the roles are reversed. Early Man 1 and Early Man 2 step out and move around and talk while the characters Greer and Cindy stand frozen in time.
Past and present are both together at the same time. An audience member in the lobby afterwards said there are so many layers. It's true! 

Originally published on my Facebook page on September 29, 2018.

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